Why I left my new MacBook for a $250 Chromebook

> As every password was saved in Chrome, I was up and running in less than five minutes.

Passwords sync just fine between Macs or PCs if you use Apple or Microsoft's complementary services (or something like 1Password). iCloud Keychain for example makes this just as seamless.

> A new Mac or PC costs you at least and hour of downloading apps and getting things up and running. And then you forgot something

Most of the time though all they did was use the web version or give up. But apparently that's better than "an hour of downloading apps and getting things up and running". There's also plenty of ways to automate that, or just restore it from a backup.

Granted, not as fast as just using the web versions of everything but then again, I can do that on my Mac or PC just fine too, without any additional setup time.

> Of course, most things don’t work very well without an Internet connection, but then again, what does?

A whole lot of things.

> Lending a computer to someone is not a pain or fear. You logout, they login (or run as Guest), do whatever they needed, then logout, you login, and everything is back as you left it. And boot times are minimal.

This works with any OS that has a Guest mode. Both Windows and OS X do this, and just about any Linux distribution can be set up in the same way. Without (re)booting, requiring an internet connection or a Google account.

Did I miss something, or is my reading comprehension failing me? It seems like the author's reason for switching platforms, and ultimately a lot of hardware (remote speakers, phone), because they sometimes can't find their files? And that it sometimes feels faster.

Wait until you discover GalliumOS[0].

Now you can have a finely tuned native Linux OS that's designed for Chromebooks. You can always dual boot it with ChromeOS to solve the problem of guests using it.

I actually just ordered a Chromebook yesterday. Can't wait until it arrives this week and set it up with Gallium.

[0] https://galliumos.org/

I don't know but all that sounds horrible:

> I found that under “About” I could get a newer version, and for some reason I had to help it

> it [Spotify] sometimes asks for Flash (?!) but with a reload it works.

> It [Skype] doesn’t support video yet

> Keynote [...] No solution found yet.

> I have to find a replacement for Hindenburg

> it would make it impossible to be a developer using one

> on the ASUS I ended up using this direct link to get it to work. You are supposed to see a little checkbox “Available for Android” [...]

> most things don’t work very well without an Internet connection,

> When I’m on an airplane, I would watch a video or listen to music on a tablet or phone anyhow

> I am selling off my AirPlay speakers and buying Chrome Casts at home to plugin to “dumb” speakers.

> to learn to love Google Slides or find an alternative.

Lately I've found that more and more of my work can be done running emacs in screen over a mosh connection to a server, so the idea of a cheap Chromebook with excellent battery life is increasingly tempting. The Pixel looks lovely to me, but I don't need a touchscreen and the price is very high - are there any lower end options that people think are particularly nice machines? Most of the cheap options just seem to have crappy build quality when I've played with them in stores.

Reading the title I thought: Because you're a hipster. And his rationalizing reasoning have proven that.

The read is overly optimistic, sometimes feels like an advert. But I agree that having some things in the cloud is certainly an advantage.

With a broadwell (or higher)-based Chromebook running GalliumOS, you have just about the best laptop money can buy.

Reading this and the comments I can't help but think that:

A) Microsoft's windows business will go away quicker than we think.. Which is why I never hear them talking about it anymore. Nadella seems to be embracing the cloud as their new platform.

B) Intel is in a lot of trouble if ARM chromebooks catch on.

I've been using Chromebooks as my only portable device for about three years now. Throw crouton on an Intel chromebook and you've got a cheap development machine that can do lots of things locally without involving the cloud.

The slideshow issue is significant though. Where are the great FOSS presentation tools like Prezi or that have the polish of Keynote? The most recent PPT is decent.

Trying to do presentations on a Nix machine is a nightmare.

For me, killer feature of Chromebook is keyboard layout - standardized throughout lineup, and with all non-essential keys thrown out. Lower row with bare minimum: ctrl, alt, space, alt and ctrl - just plain excellent - clean layout, left ctrl/alt keys are of proper size, making them super-easy to hit with a pinky.

In contrast, on Windows/Mac side of things - desktop keyboard is already bad enough with bottom row cluttered with win(command) repeated twice, plus menu/right-click key (why does this thing even exist?); On laptop, it gets even worse by adding add "fn" and often pgup/pgdn and other clutter to the mix. Then there's question of order in which they all come - is it fn, then ctrl, or other way around? was that alt beside spacebar, or is that win? etc...